It appears that Christmas really comes twice for Hot Water Music’s Aussie fans this December, as the band’s long-awaited reunion tour kicks off and guitarist Jason Black announces that the band are in the beginning stages of a new record.
It appears that Christmas really comes twice for Hot Water Music’s Aussie fans this December, as the band’s long-awaited reunion tour kicks off and guitarist Jason Black announces that the band are in the beginning stages of a new record. Well. If you add those to the actual Christmas, that kind of makes it three times, then. Nice.
“It’s coming together very slowly, though,” warns Black. “It will probably turn out that it’s something that it takes forever to write, no matter how badly we actually want to do it. It’s just that at this point in time everyone is just so damn busy – it’s been a miracle to even get us in the same venue for this tour. I’m surprised that we’re even managing to play these shows,” he chuckles.
They’re not the only ones. Even though Hot Water Music permanently called it a day back in 2006, by no means was it the end of any of the members’ musical careers. With Black joining post-hardcore lads Senses Fail, drummer George Rebelo took on drumming duties for punk-rockers Against Me!, and frontman Chuck Ragan and guitarist Chris Wollard established themselves as solo artists. In fact, it was following Ragan’s recent solo tour across Australia that fans first started to get their hopes up regarding a possible HWM reformation…
“I think maybe Chuck might have mentioned something about a new record already,” claims Black. “We are trying to write some stuff when we can, because we have a good time doing it – it’s for that reason alone. The hardest part is just trying to work around everybody because we’re all in different stages with our other bands and projects and whatnot.
“Hot Water Music is not a full-time band for anybody at this point,” he adds. “It’s not even really about the other projects we’re all involved in; there’s also the other side to life that takes over after you hit, like, 34. There’s so much personal stuff going on, especially for me and Chuck because we are both married and we have a family.”
Which is okay if you’ve been able to accomplish pretty much all of your goals in the last 17 years. With six studio albums under their belts since 1997 and countless world tours that also included a handful of Australian visits, Black says there isn’t a hell of a lot left on the band’s to-do list as far as Hot Water Music are concerned.
“We’ve come such a long way from a bunch of friends who just decided to write songs for fun,” laughs the guitarist. “I think we were different in that we never had one major goal that we wanted to achieve. A lot of bands these days do have that. Instead, we were all about the baby steps. Like, first ‘let’s do a demo and see what happens’. Then ‘let’s do an EP and see what happens’. And then ‘let’s do an album, maybe a tour… See what happens’… Like 17 years later, you look back on it and it might seem like it was a plan, but trust me, it wasn’t,” he grins.
“We never even considered we’d be able to leave the ‘States,” he chuckles, “let alone play on the other side of the world, in places like Australia. I think the fact that we always focused on the moment rather than the bigger picture had a lot to do with us staying together for so long. I can’t speak for the other guys, but I know that if I die tomorrow, I’d die pretty happy.”
According to Black, Hot Water Music’s reunion tour hasn’t only been a chance for the band members to get back together and catch up on old times – it’s also provided a chance for the band to reconnect with its die hard fanbase around the world. And you better believe HWM have some of the most loyal and dedicated fans out there – as Black explains, it’s really for the fans that the band got back together in the first place.
“For me, it’s always great motivation when someone comes up to you and tells you one of your records changed their life,” says Black. “That’s about as good as it gets for me. Sometimes I think it’s amazing that anybody ever even bought one of our albums, let alone found it totally ‘life-changing’, you know?” he ponders.
“It still blows my mind that people cared so much and still continue to give a shit about us. It’s always very flattering to inspire other kids to start playing guitar; it’s an honour when they tell you you’re the reason they picked it up when they were younger. Maybe the weirdest thing is seeing people with Hot Water Music tattoos,” he adds, “that’s extremely flattering, but I find it a little strange too! We definitely have some dedicated fans.”
And while news of Hot Water Music’s breakup four years ago left most of their fans disappointed, Black insists that nobody was hit as hard as the band itself. “There came a time for us to re-evaluate what we were doing and why we were doing it,” he states.
“We never wanted to actually break up, so we just took a hiatus first. Anyone in a band will tell you how easy it becomes to get detached from reality and what’s going on at home and all those real things that you should be a part of. There comes a time you have to start thinking about whether you’re being fair and putting in your share of responsibility. Some of us got a little tired of having to make sacrifices all the time, and our family members did too. There was a lot of heartache that came with making that decision to leave the band alone for a while. We’d become so close with our fans that the hardest thing to do was to announce it to everyone.
“But, having said that, it’s not like we ever really went away,” he adds. “A lot of Hot Water Music fans have been following our other projects – I know Chuck has a huge fanbase especially in Australia. So Hot Water Music might have taken a backseat but we haven’t really.”
CHUCK RAGAN is also going to treat Melbourne fans to a special acoustic show at The Arthouse Hotel on Monday December 6.
